Earl Thomas played Sunday with a heavy heart

Seahawks rookie safety Earl Thomas had seven tackles in Sunday’s loss to Denver, but it wasn’t an easy game for the first-round draft pick after learning less than two days earlier that long-time friend Reggie Garrett had died on the sidelines during a high school football game.

Earl Thomas

Garrett was the senior quarterback at West Orange-Stark, where Thomas played his high school ball.

Thomas helped Garrett get started as a freshman and the youngster was wearing Thomas’ No. 12 jersey number when he collapsed and died. An autopsy is pending, but officials remain uncertain why the youngster died shortly after throwing a touchdown pass.

“I’m in a road game and thinking about what happened to him,” Thomas told Chambers. “A lot of stuff was going through my mind. I was kind of out of it most of the game, but I tried to push it to the side and play to the best of my abilities.”

Thomas posted a note on his Twitter account late Friday saying he was hurting and “we lost a great person tonight and it effects the whole community. Just wanna go home.”

He later posted: “Trying to get myself prepared for the game. It (won’t) be as easy this week…a lot of stuff on my mind..I guess that’s life.”

Obviously a tough time for the 21-year-old Thomas. I asked him about the situation before practice today.

“Back home in Orange, everybody knows each other,” Thomas said. “I look at anybody that went to West Orange as brothers. We have a close bond down there. In the summertime, we all get together. I take time with the young DBs coming up and he always used to throw to us.

“It was just a shocking experience when you hear something like that. Something like that never happens. It just took me off guard. It was on my mind a lot. I try not to talk about it much, so this will probably be one of my last times talking about it.”